


Fill Me Up

by baeberiibungh



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AUish, Dissociation, Empath Will, Empathy, Established Relationship, Grounding Touch, M/M, Manipulation, Manipulative Hannibal, Mental Health Issues, dissociative disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 05:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5697289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeberiibungh/pseuds/baeberiibungh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will feels empty so Hannibal steps in...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fill Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically set in season 1, when Will is simply drowning in the false memories and blood fed rivers

It is always Will who wakes up first, but it is Hannibal who gets up from the bed first. Will will lay still and quite, not a sound or a squeak of the bed from his side. When Hannibal wakes up, he makes noises that fills the room, and sometimes, if Will is lying faced towards him, Will get to see that. How Hannibal moves and jerks his body around as he lies on the bed, his nerves and muscles and sinew working in perfect tandem to give him effortless support. Will remembers that he used to be able to do that too, hazily, but doesn’t remember how he did it, missing the manual or so it seems.

After having stretched this way and that, Hannibal will turn to Will and look into his eyes. He will say, “You are alive and here with me Will, on my bed, by my side and I know you are true.” And a weight seem to roll of Will’s chest, his mind half convinced that this will turn out to be a dream and dream Hannibal will break it for him by uttering the words in a sequence that is wrong, in a tone that is incorrect, with looks that is unfamiliar. But no, Hannibal always delivers flawlessly and Will feels it, feels the edge of his existence blink into awareness.

Next Hannibal will turn Will away from him if he is facing Hannibal, or scoot closer to his back if he is already facing away. They tried it a few time face to face but it just made things worse, giving Will a surreal sense being in a walking mirror where his right was always the left and the left always the right and he ended those days with apoplectic screams thrust into saliva and tear wet pillows while Hannibal strived to remind him that he is true, that he is real, that he is alive.

So they do it on their sides now. Hannibal, with his clipped nails and manicured hands, will slowly and steadily press the whole length of Will’s hand so that Will’s palms are cupped in Hannibal’s with both palms open up to their face, Hannibal peering at them in concentration over Will’s shoulder, over which he will hook his pointy chin. Then Hannibal will slowly close Will’s hands into a loose fist, his own hand covering it almost completely and move it in small tiny jerks at the wrist. It is at this moment that Will would wilfully take over and start to move his limbs.

Will once explained to Hannibal, how his grounding touch feels like in the morning. When Will wakes up, he feels like a deflated balloon. He sees himself lying on Hannibal’s bed, on his side usually, no form to his body except that of an empty sack. All his internal organs and bones and blood and everything else go missing within the night and a rising fear in his heart that does not even exist, that he can no longer even feel beating under his skin, that Hannibal will not see him that morning for he had ceased to exist. But no, Hannibal is yet to forget that he had Will is on his bed and give him a rejuvenating touch.

When Hannibal glides his hands over Will’s, to Will it feels like Hannibal had slit open his skin and is pushing inside the empty bag that is Will, giving him form and existence by proving with his touch that his bones and muscles exist. The fingers suddenly puff up, Hannibal really wearing his skin like a glove, except that when he pulls out of Will, the skin holds, it retains its shape and if Will looks well enough, he can even see the jut of bones in some places. Everyplace that Hannibal touches comes alive, brims into being, becomes real and Will finds that he can move, he can toss and turn, he can hug Hannibal back.

Will remembers the time he came to Hannibal with his problem and how patient Hannibal had been with him, still calling him his friend rather than the nuisance he had definitely become. 

“Everything I do now feels reflection of a reflection of a reflection. I am having problem remembering how to react to things because I am always reacting as them, letting them fill my mind. I have to scrub them out of my brain later, forget what I saw, forget what I was, and now, I am finding it difficult to articulate who I am. Maude, the old lady who really liked killing small children, also loved tea with honey and quite evenings by a bonfire. When I, when I became her, I saw that calm in her and it was so jarring Hannibal, it was the same calm I experience when I sit by a bonfire, a cup of tea in my hand and at that moment, not only I became her, but she became me too.”

Will continues, “So later, when I have to shut everything down, I don’t have the wherewithal to detangle from her one memory at a time, no, I shut her down and pushed her off a gully and she went laughing like she went in the trail and later I found that I no longer quite liked the taste of tea with honey anymore. They get in, they get in so easily Hannibal, and then I have to hack at myself to save whatever of me I can and I have become so small, so _less_ I don’t even feel real anymore, like I am the figment of someone else’s imagination, unreal, something that never existed in the first place, but came into being only as a multitude of the reflections I carry and then later shatter, one pane at a time of my being.”

Hannibal of course knew what the problem with Will was, how rapidly he was losing his sense of self. So he did what any self respecting psychiatrist/boyfriend cum mass murderer would do. He set Will’s mind on fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Not Beta read. Thanks for reading. Kindly leave kudos and comments please.


End file.
